Metalion – Jon Kristiansen
More than Varg Vikernes, Gaahl, Euronymous or Fenriz, perhaps the spirit of Norwegian death and black metal is summed up best by Jon Kristiansen, a fanzine writer from Sarpsborg. Kristiansen, who took the pen name of Metalion, is a long-haired everyman, growing up in a small, industrialised town, with little in the way of prospects and few chances to express his dissatisfaction — until he discovered the joys of extreme metal, that is. Metalion started his own A5 fanzine Slayer (named after a horror film not the band) in 1985, inspired mainly by the tape-trading network of Europe and the Americas. Fans of emergent death, thrash and first-wave black metal bands such as Sepultura, Slayer and Bathory weren’t really interested in buying Kerrang!, which was more likely to feature Prince or Phil Collins on the cover in the mid-1980s. But this exclusion from the mainstream led to the tape trading and formation of friendships that, in turn, created a loose network of houses and venues for smaller bands to create tours around.
Kristiansen simply wrote to as many bands as he could via their record labels asking for interviews. Being unemployed, the cost of postage was prohibitive to the traders and the customary sign off of “please steam off my stamps and post them back to me with your next letter” sprang up. In many ways, the punk underground of America and the metal underground grew up in tandem in this respect, and stories abound of five-year epic correspondences taking place using one solitary stamp. He would request press shots of the bands, and sometimes receive them, and other features and interviews would be illustrated with snaps cut out of mainstream mags.
One of the greatest things about this hardback compendium of all 20 issues of Slayer, spread across 722 pages and destined for the kind of coffee tables that are created from human thigh bones, are the felt tip-drawn covers and illustrations of goat-headed demons, executioners with folded arms, kangaroos with reindeer masks, head-banging dragons and the like. Seeing this juxtaposed with enthusiastic interviews in crazily spelled English with such groups as Mayhem, Metallica, Dimmu Borgir, Marilyn Manson, Ulver, Napalm Death, Carcass and Celtic Frost makes you realise that, even though Slayer was largely a one-man operation conducted from the middle of nowhere, Metalion was pretty much near the centre of the extreme metal movement for two-and-a-half decades. Despite the fact that this massive tome, which resembles a black metal breeze block, will clearly end up on the wish lists of many hipster men with £50 to burn, it is aimed squarely at the true cult metal fan, in a way that Peter Beste’s True Norwegian Black Metal book or a slew of recent documentaries simply aren’t. It is a difficult read at times, especially given the clear inability Kristiansen has to deal with the events in the early 1990s involving his friends from Mayhem, Immortal and Burzum, and his noticeable slide into depression afterwards, but it’s nonetheless a very satisfying and beautifully produced metal artefact. John Doran
